


When Eyes Meet Eyes

by wingthing



Series: The EQ Alternaverse [12]
Category: Elfquest
Genre: EQ Alternaverse, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-31
Updated: 2015-08-31
Packaged: 2018-04-18 05:58:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4694678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wingthing/pseuds/wingthing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Newstar's Recognition to her Alternaverse lifemate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When Eyes Meet Eyes

She had always lived in anticipation of that moment. She had learned the Sun Folk song at a young age. 

_Heart to heart_  
are life-mates bound  
Soul meets soul  
When eyes meet eyes 

Some elves lived and died without ever knowing Recognition. But she never feared such a fate. Her grandparents had Recognized twice within the span of three eights. Her own parents Recognized twice within seven years. Incredible Recognitions ran in her family. And at the age of eight-and-seven, the young maiden was confident she would know the joy of soul meeting soul. 

She knew it would come suddenly – unpredictably. Recognition defied expectations. 

But she never imagined just how unexpectedly it would strike. 

* * * 

The sun beat down on her bare shoulders. It was high noon, and she was overdue for her afternoon nap. But it was harvest season, and the farmers remained in the fields, gathering the last of the tubers and grain. Fresh green shoots and stalks were beginning to turn golden, and the elves hurried to pick them before the sun withered their moisture. 

She took the long path back to her family home, rather than cut through the village. She ignored the heat and the blinding glare. Foolishness, but the foolishness of any young cub. 

He was working the field alongside Jarrah and Ingen, Shendar and Seelah. He carried up long sheafs of ripened grain over to the harvest baskets. His bare skin was slick with sweat, and it shone like polished hardwood under the midday sun. She slowed her pace to a leisurely stroll, the better to drink in the sight of his bared limbs and torso. He never wore protective tunics or aprons like the other farmers. A simple loincloth was his only clothing, though he carried himself with such a childlike air that she doubted he knew what a sight he made. 

Coward, she told herself, not to approach him. Why did she hang back and content herself with sly glances? She was no cubling. And he had no regular lovemate. 

But he was much older than she, and for all her teasing ways with the Sun Folk lads, she had yet to know true joining. She had played, to be sure, and enjoyed herself immensely. But she had yet to experience initiation, and she was too shy to ask him of all elves to be her first. 

Perhaps in a few years... when practice emboldened her. 

He looked up. He saw her. She smiled and waved. He flashed her a grin and waved back. She turned her head a little, raising her hand as if to shade her eyes from the sun. 

“You will all burn up in the field!” she called. “It’s too hot for such labour.” 

“We’re almost finished,” Rayek’s mother Jarrah called. “Better to finish the last harvesting now than have to return later. The sleep will be sweeter knowing our crop is finally in.” 

Her eyes were drifting away from Jarrah, back to the object of her desire. She hoped the farmers did not notice. But there were a good fifty paces between them – and the Sun Folks’ eyes were not all that sharp. 

She watched as he turned his back to her, and the sun’s light set the taut muscles of his shoulderblades into sharp relief. How was it that he could be so well-muscled while the rest of the males in his tribe seemed so inclined to whip-thinness? He was no hunter like Rayek. And how was it that his face could be so round, so sweet and innocent, when he had the body of a predator? 

She forced herself to look away, to continue her stroll towards her hut. He would haunt her afternoon dreams. Lately all her dreams were full of fire. 

She walked down the path, adding a little sway to her hips and hoping he was watching. But she imagined he was already bending over the earth again, carefully working the soil to give up its crops. 

Something seemed to slow her steps. She felt as though someone had caught the hem of her dress. Something seemed to turn her shoulders back towards the fields. 

Sensations washed over her, as in a half-remembered dream. 

The earthy smell of suntanned skin... 

The heady rush of a midsummer’s cloudburst... 

The feeling of moth-fabric against her skin... 

The sudden inhalation of breath after walking through a cloud of steam... 

She turned back to face him. He was standing in the field, the basket once in his arms overturned on the ground. Their eyes met, and he staggered towards the path. 

She walked towards him, swaying slightly, as though overcome by fresh dreamberries... 

There were no words to describe it. 

There was no name... 

No name... but Teru. 

He was staring at her, wonder in his dark eyes. 

Such deep eyes... a dark liquid red-brown... like the rarest of hardwoods... 

She would have stopped at a modest distance, but she moved as if in a dream. Not until she was pressed up against him, her hands against his chest, did she wake. 

His lips moved, and she heard her own soulname whispered back to her. 

“Nlai...” 

Her finger rose to cover his lips. “No,” she whispered back, for like many Sun Folk, he had never learned to send. “Not among others. Never where others may hear.” But she knew none had overheard, even she had strained to hear it. 

“Newstar,” he corrected. He lifted his hand to her cheek, tanned almost as dark as a true Sun Villager after ten years in Sorrow’s End. “Why have I never seen you before...? ... never truly seen you – not like this!” 

“Teru,” she whispered. And it seemed that she had never heard that name before... never truly understood it. His entire soul was bound to that name, worn so openly, yet invisible until now. The freshness of a thunderstorm and the cloying warmth of steam, the harsh desert wind and the gentle whisper of a flowing stream – all were there, right there in his name, but unseen and unfelt by all but her. 

“But you’re just a child...” he breathed. “How...” 

She felt his uncertainty, his fear for her safety. Next to him she felt as frail as a year-old sapling. How could she bear a cub when she was barely full grown herself? 

But how could Recognition be a mistake? 

No, she knew there was no mistake. All was as it should be. 

Nothing like she expected, but all she had hoped for...


End file.
